China encourages the emergence of semiconductor giants: Loongson is a more than credible player in the semiconductor market. processor.
CPU/GPU same fight in China. Generation after generation, the progress of companies in the Middle Kingdom is impressive even if until now there was no question of competing with AMD, Intel or NVIDIA.
So far ? Indeed, the latest measurements taken on the Loongson 3A6000 seem to indicate that the Chinese processor is not that far from AMD’s Zen 4 and Intel’s Raptor Lake architectures.
A significant number of IPC
Based on the LoongArch architecture and engraved in 12 nm, undoubtedly by the Chinese founder SMIC, the Loongson 3A6000 is indeed close to the most popular architectures from AMD and Intel.
However, it must be understood that enormous differences still remain. Thus, the comparison displayed by our colleagues at Guru3D concerns the IPC, the number of instructions per cycle, which is indeed an important element in determining the power of a processor. On the other hand, this is clearly not the only point to take into account.
Indeed, the 3A6000 is a processor limited in quite a few characteristics. It is a 4 core/8 thread component only and the maximum frequency reaches 2.5 GHz. It only includes 256 KB of L2 cache and 16 MB of L3 cache. Furthermore, its TDP is 50 watts and it works with DDR4-3200.
Only 4 cores and 2.5 GHz
As our colleagues explain, on the SPEC 2017 tests where the frequencies have been normalized, the Loongson 3A6000 exceeds the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (Zen 3) in number of IPCs and approaches the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X ( Zen 4) and the Intel Core i9-14900K (Raptor Lake Refresh).
Normalizing frequencies means adjusting things so that this point is not a handicap. Except that, and this is one of the challenges for Loongson in the future, its chips have much lower frequencies than AMD and Intel processors. We are talking about 2.5 GHz versus 5.5 GHz or 5.7 GHz. Obviously, the difference is enormous.
In addition, the number of cores is also handicapping for the Chinese company which only integrates 4 cores on its chip and is therefore measured for the moment rather at the entry-level Intel: as shown in the graphs published by Guru3D, the Core i3-10100 – although far from being a monster – is 20 to 40% more efficient than the 3A6000.
The progress recorded by Loongson, however, is very real. Guru3D also emphasizes that the 3A7000, its next processor, should be engraved in 7 nm which would allow greater integration, more cores, higher frequencies and less heating.
Source : Guru3D
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